The King's Ring. Zacharias Topelius
mother had placed an emphatic veto on the matter, and exacted a solemn promise from him that he would never become a warrior.
Before, however, he was through Genesis, an incident suddenly occurred which completely altered his good intentions. This was an announcement in the daily paper from the Medical Faculty, which stated that students who wished to take service as surgeons during the war could present themselves for private medical instruction, after which they could reckon upon being ordered out with five or six thalers per month to begin with, as the war was at its height.
Now, young Bäck would no longer be denied; he wrote home that as a surgeon's duty is to take off the limbs of others, without losing his own, he wished to volunteer. After some trouble he received the desired permission. In a moment the Codex was thrown away. He did not learn, he devoured surgery, and in a few months was as capable a chirurgeon as most others; for in those times they were not very particular.
Our youthful surgeon was in the land campaigns of 1788 and 1789; but in 1790 at sea; was in many a hard battle, drank prodigiously (according to his own account), and cut off legs and arms wholesale in a most skilful way. He then knew nothing about the coincidence of his birth with Napoleon's, and therefore did not yet consider himself as under a lucky star. He often told the story of the eventful 3rd of July in Wiborg Bay, when on board the "Styrbjörn" with Stedingk, at the head of the fleet, they passed the enemy's battery at Krosserort's Point, and he was struck by a splinter on the right cheek, and carried the mark to his grave. The same shot which caused this wound wrought great havoc in the ship, and whizzing by the admiral's ear, made him stone-deaf for a time; Bäck with his lancet and palsy drops restored Stedingk's hearing in three minutes. Just then the danger was greatest and the balls flew thick as hail.
The vessel ran aground.
"Boys, we are lost," cried a voice.
"Not so!" answered Henrik Fagel, from Ahlais village, in Ulfsby, "send all the men to the bow; it is the stern that has stuck."
"All men to the prow," shouted the commander. Then the "Styrbjörn" was again afloat, and all the Swedish fleet followed in her wake. Bäck used to say:
"What the deuce would have become of the fleet if Stedingk had remained deaf?"
Everyone understood the old man; he had saved the entire squadron. Then he used to laugh and add,
"Yes, yes! You see, brother, I was born on the 15th of August; that is the whole secret; I am not to be blamed for it."
After the war was over, Bäck went to Stockholm, and became devoted to the king. He was young, and needed no reason for his attachment.
"Such a stately monarch," was his only idea.
One day, in the beginning of March, 1792, the surgeon, a handsome youth—to use his own expression—had through a chamber-maid at Countess Lantingshausen's, who in her turn stood on a confidential footing with Count Horn's favourite lackey, obtained a vague inkling of a conspiracy against the king's life. The surgeon resolved to act Providence in Sweden's destiny, and reveal to the monarch all that he knew, and perhaps a little more. He tried to obtain an audience of the king, but was denied by the chamberlain, De Besche. A second attempt had the same result. The third time, he stood in the road before the royal carriage, waving his written statement in the air.
"What does this man want?" asked Gustave III. of the chamberlain.
"He is an unemployed surgeon," replied De Besche, "and begs your Majesty to begin another war, that he may go on lopping off legs and arms."
The king laughed, and the forlorn surgeon was left behind.
A few days afterwards the king was shot.
"I was blameless," the surgeon used to say when speaking of this matter. "Had not that damned De Besche been there—yes, I won't say anything more."
Everyone understood what he meant. The "if" in the way was also due to his birthday on the 15th of August.
Shortly afterwards Bäck represented his profession at a state execution. Here his free tongue got him into trouble, and he fled on board a Pomeranian yacht. Next we find him tramping like a wandering quack to Paris. He arrived at an opportune moment, and received a humble appointment in the army of Italy. One night, under the influence of his birthday, he left his hospital at Nissa, and hurried to Mantua to see Bonaparte; he wished to make of the 15th of August a ladder to eminence. He managed to see the General, and presented a petition for an appointment as army physician.
"But," sighed the surgeon, every time he spoke of this remarkable incident, "the General was very busy, and asked one of his staff what I wanted."
"Citizen General," answered the adjutant, "it is a surgeon, who requests the honour of sawing off your leg at the first opportunity."
"Just then," added the surgeon, "the Austrian cannon began to thunder, and General Bonaparte told me to go to the devil."
Thus the surgeon, who had preserved so many eminent personages, was deprived of the honour of saving Napoleon. He got camp fever instead, and lay sick for some time at Brescia.
When well he travelled to Zurich, and here fell in love with a rosy-cheeked Swiss girl; but before he could marry her, the city was overrun, first by the Russians, then French, and finally by Suvaroff. The surgeon's betrothed ran away, and never returned.
One day he sat sorrowfully at his window, when two Cossacks came up, dismounted, seized him, and hurried him off at full speed. The surgeon thought his last hour had arrived. But the Cossacks brought him safely to a hut. There sat some officers round a punch bowl, and among them a stern man in large boots.
"Surgeon," said the latter, short and sharp, "out with your forceps; I have toothache."
Bäck ventured to ask which tooth it was that ached.
"You argue," said the man impatiently.
"No, I don't," replied the surgeon, and pulled out the first tooth he got hold of.
"Good, my boy! March," said the other, and the surgeon was dismissed with ten ducats.
He had acquired another important merit by pulling out the tooth of the hero Suvaroff.
The surgeon's next considerable journey was to St. Petersburg, where he obtained an appointment in a hospital, and made a little fortune.
Thus passed four or five years. The surgeon was now thirty-five. He said to himself,
"It is not sufficient to have preserved the Swedish fleet, Gustave III., and Armfelt; to have had an interview with Napoleon, and pulled out a tooth for Suvaroff. One must also have an aim in life." And he began to realise that he had a Fatherland.
When the war of 1808 broke out, the surgeon became an assistant physician in one of the Finnish regiments; he no longer fought for glory and the 15th of August. He took part in the campaigns of 1808 and 1809. Then he fought manfully with misery, disease, and death; cut off arms and legs, dressed wounds, applied plasters, solaced the wounded, with whom he shared his flask, bread, purse, and what was much more, his unalterable good humour, and told a thousand funny stories gathered in his travels. He was called the "tobacco doctor," because he was always ready to share his pipe and quid. One can be a Christian even with tobacco. The surgeon was not so stuck up that he, like Konow's corporal, went about
"With two quids from sheer pride."
On the contrary, he went without himself when the need was great, and a wounded comrade had got the last bit of the roll in the pocket of his yellow nankeen vest. Hence the soldiers loved the tobacco doctor.
When peace was concluded between Russia and Sweden in 1809, the latter having lost Finland through a foreign traitor, who gave up Sveaborg to the enemy, and so many Finns went over to Sweden, the surgeon thought it more honourable to remain and share the fortunes of his native land. He travelled round the country and practised amongst the peasantry. But the Medical Faculty of Abo finally forbade him to continue, and he therefore settled down at Jacobstad, his native place, and took to fishing.